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 “Old Baseball Ads, Part Two” Photo Gallery
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Another Edition of

“From the Lighter Side!”

Fun With Old Baseball Ads, Part Two

As promised, here’s Part Two of my feature on “Old Baseball Ads.” We had a lot of fun with Part One, with some of the readers sending me ads that they found themselves. 

As I mentioned in Part One, after doing just a little research, I discovered a whole slew of old baseball ads from days gone by, some of them really funny. Again, I guess we have to keep in mind that back in the not-too-distant-past, baseball players weren’t pampered multi-millionaires like they are today. Most of them worked during the off-season to make ends meet,  so a $500 advance for lending your name to a simple product endorsement was a big payoff, and possibly meant the difference between working during the off-season and taking it easy with the wife and kids back home.

In the featured photo above, we see Hall-of-Famer Frankie Frisch with a graduation cap on. Oh, now I get it…He’s doing an endorsement for Carling’s “Red Cap” ale.!

So in case you missed Part One, I thought it might be fun to take a look back at some more of these old baseball ads. And, as I mentioned, there seemed to be no end to the range of products that ballplayers endorsed, many of them staples of American life from days gone by. The shortlist would include:

Many brands of cigarettes (Luckies, Chesterfields, Camels), Champ Cigarette lighters, pipe tobacco (Granger, Velvet), tobacco chews (Redman, Tuxedo), beer (Budweiser, Falstaff, Rheingold, Old Style), Carling’s ale, hard liquor and booze, cereals (Shredded Wheat, Cream of Wheat, Wheaties, Puffed Rice, Kelloggs’s Corn Flakes), candy, metal box cars, assorted toys, Whirly Bird Play Catch game, shoes (PF Flyers, Converse), Cracker Jack, baseball equipment (Louisville sluggers and Spaulding bats, mitts), Alaga breakfast syrup, gum (Beach-nut, Wrigley’s Doublemint), automobiles, Iron Man batteries, Yoo-Hoo chocolate drinks, soda (Coke, Red Rock, and Moxie), Carnation Milk, toothpaste (Ipana, Colgate), Alemite lubricants (not what you’re thinking!), garter belts, pizza, bread, baseball board games, razor blades (Gem and Gillette).

And the players doing the endorsements read like a who’s-who of the games biggest names, covering all eras:

Willie Mays, Micky Mantle, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Hank Aaron, Walter johnson, Warren Spahn, Christy Mathewson, Yogi Berra, Harry Heilmann, Johnny Mize, Dizzy Dean, Lou Brock, Frankie Frisch, Whitey Ford, Mel Ott, Paul Waner, Allie Reynolds, Ty Cobb, Jimmie Foxx, Sandy Koufax, Ernie Banks, Lefty Grove, and Jackie Robinson. 

So let’s go over a couple of them and see what we find. I’ll feature them here, and then I’ll put a bunch in the gallery above for you to enjoy.

Here’s a good one.  It’s the Babe doing one of his numerous endorsements, this one for Puffed Rice. It was no different back then than it is now. You put the Bambino’s mug on a product and it sells!

 

Here’s another good one. That’s ol’ Diz doing an endorsement for Falstaff Beer. 

 

And here’s one of my favorites that I showed in Part One. That’s Johnny Mize getting his little piece of the endorsement action, this one for Red Man, America’s Best Chew:

Be sure to check out the others in the gallery above.

Gary Livacari